Taken by Storm (3 page)

Authors: Angela Morrison

Tags: #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Christian, #Friendship, #Juvenile Fiction, #Sports & Recreation, #General, #Religious, #Water Sports, #Death & Dying

BOOK: Taken by Storm

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i can’t remember much about the past week. A lot of blue pills. A punctured arch and a tetanus shot. A hospital ward i didn’t care to be in. Questions i didn’t care to answer.

Some trauma shrink told me to talk about it as much as i can. Who am i going to talk to? Not him. He said something about processing. That’s how i feel—numb, mechanical, processed—like a jar of nasty yellow cheese.

i like the pills, though. The shrink gave me an extra bottle to take—i was going to write home. With his pills dissolving in my gut, my brain mucks into the quarry back in the Keys. Water fog. Shifting grayish green. Freaked me when i was a kid. Now, though, i want no vis. When the pills wear off and reality tries to sneak back in, i’m twelve-year-old me fighting blind terror, trying to keep myself from tearing to the surface and blowing the dive.

The plane finally takes off. Loading all the coffins

while. i watched from the terminal window. Eighteen. i counted. The coffin i bought for Mom looks nice. i think it’s cherry. She liked cherry. Our house is full of it. And pink. Pale pink satin. Not in our house. In the coffin. They didn’t have any hot pink with white fish blowing bubbles. She wouldn’t have liked traveling in gray plastic like they stuck the guys in.

i have to leave Dad here. They still can’t get him out. Fuel leak. Too toxic, even for dry suits. Maybe the stink of the gas will keep the sharks out of there—

Freak—i think i’m going to puke again, and the chicks with the drink cart are coming with their complimentary sodas, blocking the aisle. My seat’s barf bag is stuck together with gum. Hurry, chicks. i need to wash down two more of my complimentary pills.

Breathe, that’s it, just inhale, exhale, long and slow. Inhale again. Hold it. Let that O
₂feed your brain. Do it again. And again. Pack. Hang on for a few. Swallow the pills dry. The movie sucks, but the pills work. i’m sinking fast. i won’t notice the tanned woman with gold bracelets sitting next to me who’s about my mom’s age. i won’t hear the loud lady behind me condemning everyone i loved, everyone i lost. When i close my eyes, i won’t see Mom twirling in her pink sundress for Dad. i won’t smell her gardenia perfume. i won’t watch Dad smoothly catching her arm and herding her out of the cabin. i won’t hear him crack open another crab claw.

i won’t remember Mom screaming my name.

MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG—VOLUME #8

i can’t get warm. Too cold here for Arizona blood. Maybe i should go home to Phoenix—wander around that great big house by myself. Right. It creeps me out staying here, sleeping in Dad’s bed from his glory high school days, but our house full of their socks and shoes and underwear—no way. Gram’s place is my only option.

Stan, the dive club’s treasurer, met the plane in Miami and claimed all the bodies. Guess lawyers are good for something. He took Mom, too. Handed me a one-way ticket to Spokane and a duffel full of my stuff from our condo on Duck Key, thumped me on the back, and said, “Be strong, kid.”

Gram met my plane, her face wet and crumpled. Since i got to her sugar-cube house in Teacup, Washington, all i’ve done is eat blue pills and lie in Dad’s old room with that quilt Gram made from pieces of his worn-out jeans pulled over my head. At night, when the pills wear off, i stare at the glowing dial of a clock radio shaped like a football until the nightmares start. i’m on deck thinking how cool it is. Rain like i’ve never seen. Debris pounding like hail. Then Isadore arrives packing a thirty-foot surge. Mom screams, “Michael, get down here. Michael.”

i wake when the wave takes me, shaking, nauseous, covered in sweat, tangled in the pants quilt. i pop more pills, grit my teeth, and wait. She should have made it. i did. i kept telling the helicopter guys to look for a pink sundress, but nobody listened to me. They left her out there too long. So she screams until the pills kick back in.

There’s a spidery-thin crack in the wall Dad’s old bed is shoved up against. It disappears behind a faded Pink Floyd poster but re-emerges and keeps snaking down the wall until it vanishes behind the bed—right where my pillow is. i take down the poster so my eyes can trace the lines of that crack while the fog settles back down around my ears.

Stan phoned. Was it yesterday? No, two days ago. Gram got me out of bed for the call.

“We all got together Sunday for a memorial dive.”

All?

“We dove the Thunderbolt and then went over to the barge.”

“Cool.” i feel cheated. The T-bolt’s the first deep wreck i ever dove. Dad took me.

“Be strong, man.”

“Sure.” They had no right to remember my parents without me. i’m the one who was there—on that boat. In that storm.

“Are you still there, Michael?” Stan’s voice scrapes my senses.

Where else would i be, Stan?

“I need to talk legal stuff with your grandmother.”

i hand off the phone. Like Gram can deal with anything more than fixing me endless plates of French toast. Legal stuff. He’ll freak her for sure.

Stan must have said something about getting me into school. Gram started in on me as soon as she was off the phone. i can’t blame her. She’s got to be tired of watching me pick at her thick, gooey, cinnamoned French toast, tired of hearing me retching it into her pink toilet bowl whenever i choke a plate down. That stuff used to be my all-time favorite food. When i was a kid and we visited Teacup, she could get me to do anything for a plate of it. Even go down the hill to church with her on Sundays and let the minister pinch my cheek and mess up my hair. Must kill her to hear me vomit it away.

Food and my stomach don’t remember how to get along. Getting along with Gram. That’s another challenge. i don’t know how much longer i can take her tear-stained face hovering over me all day, her shaking finger touching my cheek like she needs to check if i’m real. Maybe she thinks i’m Dad. She stares at me and then the eyes overflow and she disappears into her bedroom. She keeps wanting to change my bandage—like i can’t do it myself. Her house smells nasty now. Not that candy scent i remember from visits before she started coming to the condo with us.

School? Sounds even worse.

chapter 3

EVERYBODY’S TALKING

LEESIE HUNT / CHATSPOT LOG / 09/18 7:52 P.M.